Strategies for States to Encourage and Fund Community Care Teams

Strategies for States to Encourage and Fund Community Care Teams outlines the role that community care teams can play in improving the quality and value of health care provided by the states, especially to Med­icaid populations. It also identifies strategies that states can adopt to promote the use of multidis­ciplinary care teams and to put sustainable financing in place. To realize the potential benefits of medical homes and community care teams, states and other payers must help finance the upfront cost of establish­ing them. Strategies that states can use to put such sus­tainable financing in place, either directly or indirectly, include the following:

• Include the formation of community care teams in the specifications and funding of medical or health homes to take advantage of the enhanced federal Medicaid financing of health homes be­ginning in 2012.;
• Adopt payment policies to reimburse for com­munity care services, such as community health workers, that offer incentives for the provision of such services under the states’ Medicaid and CHIP programs;
• Include the provision of community care team services as a specification for directing contract­ing arrangements with provider delivery systems, such as ACOs. Provide for advanced payment to these systems to develop care teams;
• Include the provision of community care team services in Managed Care Organization (MCO) contract specifications for certain Medicaid popu­lations; and
• Encourage the funding of community care team programs by private foundations, charitable orga­nizations and counties through grant making.